Search engines are a powerful tool of locating and retrieving documents from the Internet (or an intranet). Many websites include at least one search box on their webpages. The search box on a particular webpage typically enables users to submit search queries to search for documents at the website associated with the webpage, or to search for document on the Internet. However, most websites do not have an exclusive, dedicated search engine system for processing these search queries. This is especially true if the search box enables searches of the entire Internet for relevant documents. Rather, the search queries are re-directed to and processed by a third-party search engine (e.g., www.google.com). The third-party search engine generates search results responsive to the search queries (e.g., by searching a database of documents) and returns the search results to the requesting users.
Traditionally, the search results produced by the third-party search engine are independent of the website from which a search query is submitted. For example, the search engine generates the same search result for the search query “apple” irrespective of whether the search query is from the website of an online retail electronics store frequented by Apple computer users or an online shopping website hosted by a grocery store. Clearly visitors to these two websites have different interests and should receive different search results. As a result, the search results returned for the search query “apple” are likely to include results of little interest to visitors to these respective websites.
A similar issue could arise for a website that includes multiple search boxes associated with different webpages. For instance, a sports news website may have one webpage covering domestic news and another one devoted to international news. A user entering the term “football” into the search box on the domestic news webpage is probably interested in news related to American football, while a user entering the same term “football” into the search box on the international news webpage is probably more interested in news about soccer (which is known as “football” outside the United States). Similar issues may arise if a sports news website has different webpages covering news for different sports, and search boxes in each of these pages. Thus, when a search engine ignores the webpages from which a search query is submitted, users do not receive search results best tailored to their distinct interests.
In view of the aforementioned, it would be desirable to have a search engine that can customize its search results in accordance with the websites (or webpages) from which the corresponding search queries are submitted so as to highlight information items in the search results that are most likely to be of interest to the users who submit the search queries. Further, it would be desirable for such a system to operate without explicit input from a user with regard to the user's personal preferences and interests and therefore free the user from concerns over exposing private information.